Make This Easy Authentic Filipino Adobo Chicken Recipe for Dinner Tonight Filipino Recipes Poultry Dinner

I grew up eating my Filipina grandmother's Adobo Chicken. This chicken dinner is the most amazing of all Filipino recipes. Lola, as we call her, is a wonderful cook and I always looked forward to her meals, especially this savory chicken recipe.

Now that I live on my own, I have been trying to re-create Lola's incredible Adobo Chicken. I felt like whenever I made Adobo, it wasn’t quite as good as hers. But I finally created a recipe that I think comes close to doing hers justice.

To make Adobo Chicken at home, you will need chicken legs or thighs, soy sauce, a lemon, bay leaves, brown sugar, garlic, black pepper. Serve this authentic Filipino chicken recipe over rice for dinner with your favorite side dishes.

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Cuisine: Filipino
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 1 hour and 5 minutes
Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 8 chicken legs or chicken thighs, or a combination (but not chicken breast)
• 6 - 8 tablespoons soy sauce (or gluten-free soy sauce)
• 1 whole lemon
• 3 - 4 bay leaves
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 3 - 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• black pepper, to taste
• rice, for serving

Helpful Products

• Large Pot 
• Rice Cooker
• Measuring Cups
• Measuring Spoons
• Filipino Cookbooks
• Food Storage Containers

Recipe Notes

• Do not use chicken breast for this dish. Chicken breast tends to dry out, and you want moist chicken.

• Adjust the ingredients to create a dish that fits your tastes.

• Store the leftover chicken and rice in airtight containers.

Here's how to make it: 

1. Put the chicken, bay leaves, lemon (instead of vinegar, which many Adobo recipes call for), black pepper, bay leaves, garlic, sugar and soy sauce into a large pot. (I put in 6 tablespoons of soy sauce, a whole lemon, which is very important, and about 1 to 2 tablespoons of sugar. It won’t seem like a lot of sauce yet in the pot.)
2. When all the ingredients are in, bring it to a boil. After it's boiling, reduce hear and then simmer. (You will see that the juice comes out of the chicken and magically creates a sauce that fills up the pot! You can add more soy sauce and lemon if you want, but try to keep it only half covering the meat since so much more sauce will be created as it simmers. Feel free to tinker with the ingredients if you prefer more pepper, sugar or garlic, etc.)
3. While it's simmering, make a pot of rice in a rice cooker or however you prefer to cook rice. Within an hour, you will have a fresh pot of the most savory, moist, delicious chicken ever. Serve over rice and enjoy!

Recipe cooking times and servings are approximate. To ensure image quality, we may occasionally use stock photography. Need to convert cooking and baking measurements? Here are some kitchen conversion charts. Here's how to submit your recipes to 30Seconds.

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